Making a mark through economic diplomacy

With a proactive and active approach to expanding cooperative relations with partners, localities, and territories around the world, in 2025, the foreign affairs and economic diplomacy efforts of Dong Nai Province achieved positive results.

Enterprises display products at the Vietnam-Japan business networking conference held in Dong Nai in November 2025.

Economic diplomacy is one of the activities contributing to the province’s economic growth, while also expanding cooperative relationships with potential economies around the world.

Proactively strengthening trade connectivity and expanding markets

With the motto “The government accompanies enterprises”, in 2025, the leadership of Dong Nai Province held numerous working sessions with enterprises and business associations and organized conferences to meet foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises operating in the province. At the same time, many investment promotion, trade promotion, and tourism promotion activities were organized both domestically and internationally.

In 2025, Dong Nai carried out numerous trade connections and investment promotion activities in many potential countries with large-scale economies worldwide, such as Portugal, Japan, and China. Notable examples include its participation in the International Vegetable and Fruit Technology Exhibition Shouguang (in Shandong Province, China); attendance at the 22nd China - ASEAN Expo (CAEXPO 2025) in Guangxi, China; and the Investment Promotion Conference with enterprises and partners in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, Dong Nai Province maintained friendly cooperative relations in economic fields, particularly rubber cultivation and processing, such as Phu Rieng Rubber One Member Limited Liability Company’s joint venture capital contribution to invest in rubber plantations in Cambodia with Phu Rieng - Kratie Rubber Joint Stock Company; and provincial leadership delegations visiting and working in the Republic of Cuba.

Speaking at the Vietnam-Japan business networking conference, Tsuji Atsushi, Head of the International Projects Division of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI-Kansai), stated that trade connection is an important activity within the program series promoting economic exchange between Kansai and Vietnam. According to Tsuji Atsushi, Dong Nai Province currently has approximately 250 Japanese enterprises investing in industrial parks, making it one of the localities with the largest number of Japanese-invested enterprises in Vietnam. However, to further expand their business operations, Japanese enterprises expect to increase localization rates and strengthen cooperation with local suppliers. At present, the Kinki Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry is coordinating with the Dong Nai provincial coordinator team to search for and connect with potential suppliers in Vietnam.

In addition, over the past year, Dong Nai Province organized receptions for 28 foreign delegations visiting and working to exchange experience and explore opportunities for investment and business cooperation. Overall, in 2025, the province’s foreign affairs programs and action plans consistently received close attention and direction from the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial People’s Committee, and achieved many notable results across all three pillars: Party diplomacy, State diplomacy, and People-to-People diplomacy. These efforts contributed to promoting socio-economic development and increasingly deep and effective international integration of the locality in the coming period.

By the end of 2025, Dong Nai had signed 88 provincial-level international agreements with 17 countries and territories worldwide, including China, South Korea, the United States, France, Japan, Thailand, Germany, and Portugal. Of these, 27 international agreements remain in effect.

Promoting the effective exploitation of new growth drivers

Located in the Southern Key Economic Region, especially with the Long Thanh International Airport Project expected to be put into operation in the first half of 2026, Dong Nai will have favorable conditions to become an ideal destination for investors worldwide.

Currently, Dong Nai is paying great attention to solutions to boost the attraction of high-tech, environmentally friendly projects in three spearhead groups: aviation technology; semiconductor technology, chip manufacturing, and artificial intelligence (AI); and automation equipment and information technology equipment. To attract investors, Dong Nai has allocated a large area of rubber land, favorable for site clearance, to further develop industrial parks (approximately 18.5 thousand hectares); planned a high-tech zone of about 500 hectares and an information technology industrial park of 100 hectares to attract high-tech investors.

Therefore, alongside investment attraction, Dong Nai will proactively seek out and effectively exploit markets with strong growth momentum to establish connections and create conditions for enterprises operating in the locality to participate and seek trade opportunities. This approach follows the directive spirit of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the online conference with ambassadors and heads of Vietnamese representative missions abroad on summarizing economic diplomacy work in 2025 and deploying tasks for 2026, held on January 10 in Hanoi.

The Prime Minister emphasized that, with the motto “Unity to create strength, cooperation for mutual benefit, and dialogue for trust”,  and that “diplomacy in general and economic diplomacy in particular must be sincere, with the spirit of harmonized interests and shared risks”, he directed ministries, sectors, localities, agencies, enterprises, and Vietnamese representative missions abroad to decisively and concretely implement and effectively carry out the Party’s and State’s guidelines and policies, especially the Resolution of the 14th National Party Congress and the strategic resolutions of the Politburo that have been and will be issued in the coming time.

By Ngoc Lien - Translated by Quynh Nhu, Thu Ha